SSCS gifts

Now that the dust has settled on our Christmas celebrations I want to share the beautiful gifts given to me by Cheryl in the SSCS exchange organised by Chookyblue and her very able assisant Googy girl.  In my last post I showed you the sweet little angel ornament Cheryl stitched for me and here is my beautiful Christmas stitchery piece, isn't it lovely?  I love the pretty variegated thread Cheryl has used, and the festive fabrics too.  Not only did Cheryl give me some of her beautiful stitching, but she also gave me a kit for another of Marg Low's cute Santa ornaments, I've seen some of these around blogland lately and they are lovely!  Thank you Cheryl, I have been thoroughly spoiled....

My SSCS partner was Maria in Australia, and I made her a Shepherds Bush cross stitch design into a Christmas pillow.  I made a few modifications to the pattern to make it the right size and shape.  I included a hexagon bag pattern and a few fabrics for Maria, a little blog spying told me that not only did she like the colour purple but she was a hexie fan too!  

A big thanks to Chookyblue and Googygirl for the time and skills they put into organising this swap, it's the only one I've participated in every year since I started this blog, and I love it, it wouldn't seem like Christmas morning without my SSCS parcel to open!  

Well the year is rapidly drawing to a close, I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope all good things come to you in 2014.  We are going camping with friends for a couple of nights to see the New Year in, so I will see you all again early in 2014.......... till then, take care ...... Nicky xxx

January plans

So far so good - my January plans are working out.  It's been a long time between drinks, so to speak, but finally I have another A Gardeners Journal block done(just pretend it was finished in August!)

I finished up this wee needleroll yesterday, took about 20 minutes, only it had to wait 2 and a half years to get done.  Better late than never!

  

Isn't the little dragonfly button sweet.

 

In My Garden Needleroll - Shepherds Bush

Fabric and threads as kitted

Our camping trip was fabulous, got home and realised I have no tent or campsite photos, but here are some lake photos I did manage.  The weather was great while we were away, though we were worried when it started to pour on the way there!  But it stopped to let us get our tent up, and by the next morning all the rain was over.  Everyone came home with a bit of sunburn - Ouch.  Lots of fun, swimming in the lake, boating and time spent with friends.   The girls start back at school next week, so that brings the summer holidays almost to an end.  :-(

 

 

And last but certainly not least, I have joined Peg and Kris with their OPAM challenge for 2011, lucky I finished the needleroll yesterday, or I would not be off to a good start. lol 

Now I have to set up a list and button for my sidebar and get busy!  Between OPAM and Sew It's Finished I want to get more done than my miserable dozen or so finishes from last year. 

Lovely day here today, I'm off to the garden for some much needed weeding.......have a great day, Nicky

2011 ...... the year of the WIP.........

Happy New Year all - wishing you the best of the best for 2011!

After a year of muddling along stitching a little of this and a little of that, and actually finishing very little, I have decided, along with a lot of others it would seem, that 2011 is going to be my year of the WIP!  Bold statement isn't it. lol

Don't for a minute think that I won't start anything new, in fact I have a few things I'm keen to rip into- think Vignette and the Tis the Season SAL - but I will also attempt to tidy up a few things that have been lurking for a few(or sometimes even 10+) years.  The first part of this plan is to locate and list all of the WIP's that I own.  This is a really scary thought, as they are lurking everywhere.  Being a Type 2 crafter, I have projects in bags and baskets in at least four different rooms of the house, so just finding them all will take some time.

I'm also sure that there are several things that I just don't love now like I did when I started them, so I think there might need to be a bit of a biff out/donate to charity/give away pile also.  That might seem like cheating, but I think I just need to cut my losses on some of the things that I am not feeling the love for anymore.

Thanks to Michelle for pointing me in this direction, a bit of motivation is at hand. A challenge - and of course another blog - should be the kick in the butt I need.

Top of the list will be the Stitching Round the Block pieces for Leanne(now done), Raewyn(almost done) and Janis, and then I will try and prioritise my list of UFO's.  I'm thinking I will put my list on a separate page on my blog, I don't think my sidebar could cope with this list!

Here is a little sneek peek of Raewyns block -  I love her fabrics and gorgeous Aurifil threads she has chosen.

Some projects need so little done on them it's almost ridiculous.  I made this little cushion(from a Country Threads magazine, I think) five years ago for a friends birthday, didn't finish it and ended up just buying her a gift.  For goodness sake, it only needs stuffed and the opening at the bottom stitched up - what is wrong with me!

 And there are others like this wrinkly piece The Potting Shed by Shepherds Bush, that need a lot of work.

I have a lot of small pieces of stitched up cross stitch that need made up into 'something', not sure whether to add them or not.   I probably will list them as they are mostly within my limited finishing skills to do something with them. lol.  I'm definitely not listing the finished big cross stitches waiting for framing as that is more a matter of the cost of framing them, than me needing to do any more to them!

I don't even mind if the WIP total at the end of the year isn't a lot less, would just be nice to finally finish some long neglected projects and then feel less guilty about starting new ones.

So hopefully, confessing all of this publicly will keep me on track - how many Works in Progress do you have?  Let me know if you plan on attacking your pile this year too.

Have a great day ............. happy stitching........... Nicky

When life gives you lemons ............make lemonade

........and when Mother Nature gives you snow................get Dad to build a sled and have some fun!

Slight design flaw - you end up with just as much snow on top of you as all around you!  The girls loved it anyway, and are pretty pleased they can't get through to school today. 

We are trying to keep our chins up, but things are pretty dire out there, lots more snow yesterday, it eased off a little later in the day, and there's been a slight thawing overnight.  Unfortunately though, more snow is forecast for tonight, so any thawing so the ewes can get to some grass today would be wonderful. 

Another cloud with a silver lining - I had time to get my little Lamb scissor fob finished up......... rather fittingly photgraphed on a bed of snow.

Spring Scissor Fob

Shepherds Bush

32ct Waterlily Linen with DMC and WDW thread as kitted

Now that it's finished I can't believe I left it so long to stitch up the back and finish it up. I think the thought of making the cord myself was a bit daunting, but it really wasn't so bad!The only change I made was the year, not 2003 as the chart listed!  

A huge thanks for all the lovely, kind comments left about the lambs and snow, we will do the very best we can, and are hoping that our stock come through OK.

Till next time .............. Nicky

It's Spring, apparently........

......but this is what we woke to this morning...................

....and about 4 hours later, it had changed to this.............

Large coffee cup added for perspective!

It's definitely not a great day to be a newborn lamb, we are just hoping that the ewes have headed for shelter, it is snowing so heavily now, that we would do more damage than good by going out into the paddocks, and would end up chasing ewes out of shelter and mismothering lambs.  Not even sure if the motorbike would get very far in this at the moment anyway.

Up until now lambing had been going great, weather had been not too bad, and the ewes were lambing with very little trouble.  Guess we are now paying for the great winter we had!  We are only bottle feeding about 12 pet/orphan lambs just now, but that will probably change once this storm passes.  I think most of New Zealand is experiencing terrible weather this weekend, heavy rain, huge winds and sea swells in the North Island and snow and rain in the South Island.  They have forecast it for nearly a week, but after seeing on the news some of the snow that Tasmania in Australia got, we were just hoping it would not get that bad.

My plans for Friday Night Sew-In didn't quite come off as I'd hoped, I did get the cutting out of my quilt runner done, before it just got too cold in my sewing room and I settled for some cross stitching by the fire instead.   Here's a peek at what I was working on.  Hopefully I will have something to show for my efforts by the end of the weekend! 

If you were participating in FNSI, I hope you had much better results!

Thanks for stopping by today, have a wonderful weekend.................Nicky

Needlerolls

One of my favourite finishes are needlerolls. There are quite a few in my collection, and many more to be stitched and made up. This is a Shepherds Bush design, Folk Heart Roll.

Folk Heart Roll
Shepherds Bush

Stitched on 28ct Lavendar Mist Cashel Linen with DMC, Mill Hill Beads

I've been putting some stitches into my Leannes House Couch Companion over the last few days, will try and get some progress pics over the weekend.

Till next time, enjoy your stitching.

Shepherds Bush Stockings

When packing away our Christmas decorations, I thought I should get some pics of the stockings I stitched for our girls some years back. I love Shepherds Bush designs and their stockings are some of my favourites. These are Mary's Stocking on the left and Elisabeth's Stocking on the right.

Mary's Stocking

Shepherds Bush

Stitched on 18ct Floba fabric with Perle 5 DMC and Weeks Dye Works thread

Elisabeth's Stocking

Shepherds Bush

Stitched on 18ct Floba fabric with Perle 5 DMC and Weeks Dye Works thread

The bead/charm packs that you can get for these patterns are so sweet, with lots of cute charms and buttons to bring the stitching to life. These were lots of fun to stitch and one day I would like to make one each for my husband and myself. I finished these up myself, lots of trial and error, it's not something I have ever tried before. That is something I hope to improve at - I really enjoy stitching, but am not at all competent at actually finishing the stitching into 'something'. Lucky there is so much fabulous inspiration out there in blogland!

We are enjoying some sunny, warm weather here at the moment, though it is long overdue, up till the last week or so, this would be the worst summer we have had for a very long time. We have had almost continual rain in December and most of January, so we are quite behind with a lot of our tractor work, these last few days have seen lots of action around the farm. Hopefully there will still be some time for a little stitching........